Communication between individuals is critical for species survival, reproduction, and expansion. Most terrestrial species, with the exception of humans who predominantly use vision and phonation to create their social network, rely on the detection and decoding of olfactory signals, which are widely known as pheromones. These chemosensory cues originate from bodily fluids, causing attractive or avoidance behaviors in subjects of the same species. Intraspecific pheromone signaling is then crucial to identify sex, social ranking, individuality, and health status, thus establishing hierarchies and finalizing the most efficient reproductive strategies. Indeed, all these features require fine tuning of the olfactory systems to detect molecules containing this information. To cope with this complexity of signals, tetrapods have developed dedicated olfactory subsystems that refer to distinct peripheral sensory detectors, called the main olfactory and the vomeronasal organ, and two minor structures, namely the septal organ of Masera and the Grueneberg ganglion. Among these, the vomeronasal organ plays the most remarkable role in pheromone coding by mediating several behavioral outcomes that are critical for species conservation and amplification. In rodents, this organ is organized into two segregated neuronal subsets that express different receptor families. To some extent, this dichotomic organization is preserved in higher projection areas of the central nervous system, suggesting, at first glance, distinct functions for these two neuronal pathways. Here, I will specifically focus on this issue and discuss the role of vomeronasal receptors in mediating important innate behavioral effects through the recognition of pheromones and other biological chemosignals.

中文翻译：

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犁鼻受体对信息素的编码

个体之间的交流对于物种的生存、繁殖和扩张至关重要。大多数陆地物种，除了主要使用视觉和发声来创建社交网络的人类，都依赖于嗅觉信号的检测和解码，这些信号被广泛称为信息素。这些化学感应线索源自体液，在同一物种的受试者中引起吸引或回避行为。种内信息素信号对于识别性别、社会等级、个性和健康状况至关重要，从而建立层次结构并最终确定最有效的生殖策略。事实上，所有这些特征都需要对嗅觉系统进行微调，以检测包含这些信息的分子。为了应对这种复杂的信号，四足动物已经开发出专门的嗅觉子系统，这些子系统指的是不同的外围感觉探测器，称为主要嗅觉和犁鼻器官，以及两个次要结构，即马塞拉的隔膜器官和格鲁内伯格神经节。其中，犁鼻器官通过介导对物种保护和扩增至关重要的几种行为结果，在信息素编码中发挥最显着的作用。在啮齿动物中，这个器官被组织成两个分离的神经元亚群，表达不同的受体家族。在某种程度上，这种二分组织保留在中枢神经系统的较高投射区域，乍一看，这表明这两种神经元通路具有不同的功能。这里，